Sunday, August 28, 2011

yes i loved the skirt i will send you my chip when transfers are over which will be next week!! i have a feeling that me and sister dunlop will seperate and train there are three newbs coming in and sister ruckuert is leaving next week!!!! can you believe she is done already it feels like yesterday i was with her in pampulha with ronald by the way did you finish his names? dont worry i have cds of my transfers with sister ruckert and sister flora but there are some pics still on the chip i will send home of ctm and of sister ruckert. send some pics of their house when they move in is it close to the procuniars?

i cannot believe brenan will drive!!!! what he is 8 years old running around hitting and teasing me still taht is the brenan i know not brenan driving a car and can date! thanks for sending a note it was great to here from people that ihavent heard from in a while and is my address visible on the blog bc i cant email back but no one is giving me addresses to respond make sure on the blog it says my address clear so that they know they can write me too and that i need addresses to respond :)

i hope i answered some of your questions and its more clear now

well another week flew by and its pday again... this week was another good one. i love venda nova ya i think i already said that a few times but its true! transfers are in one week and i dont know where ill go but i will definetly miss this area it feels like home. This past sunday john and harrison got baptized (brothers of our recent convert roxanne). they were so excited, everyday they asked when is our baptism, what do we have to do, they are so cute and are reading the book of mormon everyday, they are my examples oh and our recent convert junio baptized them! he was so nervous and practiced the words all week to be prepared and when sunday came he realized he memorized the wrong words ahah he siaid sister corbin i dont know what to do i didnt memorize the right part ahah i started to laugh and told him it was alright the elders will help you... also henrique was confirmed, he is only 13 and came to church all by himself bc his aunt couldnt come. sister dunlop and I are working hard to hit our goal of 8 baptisms this month meaning we got to have 4 this sunday... can we do it? yes. we got 4 lined up that we are working with, were literally running house to house bc everyone lives in different neighborhoods. we found jefferson last thursday he is literally amazing. it was almost as if he was waiting for someone to knock on his door to tell him what he needed to do in his life. he is 19 and the only male in his family. he is already in 1 nephi 21 and wants to do everything right.. he went to church and after said i know its true.. then went to the fireside about temples after and said what do i need to do to go there... welp let me tell ya ha.. were encouraging him to go on a mission already hah. i love finding people that are just ready to hear and follow. another thing that we are doing this week is looking for less actives to help come back to church. the stake president asked us to do this work for 2 hours each day. monday we found a man that got baptized at age 19 but fell away because he moved. we found him again and told him that we needed him to come back. last night was legitimate, we didnt waste time, we invited him and his "wife" to get married and we marked a date to get married and a date for her baptism all in the same lesson and we chose oct 12 and oct 16. i love being with sister dunlop because all we do is invite ha we just tell people what they have to do to return to our heavenly father and if they dont want to do it, we dont waste our time. i dont have much time today to write a long email but these past few weeks im learning more and more about the importance of our life on earth and how our choices here effect our outcome for the eternities... we have the chance to go back to our heavenly father in his kingdom, why wouldnt we do everything possible to achieve this goal. i love the gospel, i love the work, even when it gets hard sometimes, you just got to say, "it happens" and move on, if you dwell on the little things you will never open your eyes to see the blessings that are already there. LOVE YOU ALL THANK YOU FOR THE EMAILS! i need your addresses to write back please send them :)

Friday, August 19, 2011

wow thanks for all the emails this week! it was great to hear from a few of you that i havnt heard from in a while and im happy all is well in the world. Tomorrow will mark my year mark as a missionary. What? where did the time go? I only got 6 months left? in mission life that = nothing. i feel like i have so much more to do.

This week i dont have to much to say but that work is moving forward. the other day we found a family that is excited... we started at the bottom of this street that happened to be a huge hill like always and i was apparently staring at this house after a min or two sister dunlop looked at me and said you want to teach there you have been staring for really long haha i said ya ha, sure enough a mother and her four children accepted the preparation to be baptized. the next day we did what was necessary to help our investigators, found one in the bar and pulled him out and tried to explain to another that we were her answer. we always got to be excited and have a smile on our face even through the hard times. my president is such a good example of this everytime he calls he says " are we excited sister!?" and i always say "always presidente!!!" without this attitude and excitement about the gospel nothing will get done.

these past couple weeks i have gained a strong testimony of families and how we can gain an eternal family.. its so much more then going through the flow doing our part more or less, kind of keeping the commandments or pushing repentance to the last minute or always questioning the lord, where is the line? there is a reason heavenly father created three kingdoms of glory and only those that do everything i mean everything will make it to the top...i have been thinking a lot about those that we have been teaching that are honarble church goers that love the lord but when it comes to acceptintg the gospel they close off thier hearts.. in order to make it to the top they have to accept here on the earth! its so hard to explain the details of exaltation to a person that only prays alone in thier house and doesnt understand the importance of the meaning, sabath day. sometimes i feel so preoccupied with other peoples salvation ha i dont know what to do. we got to baptize and get people to the temple! this is where we will be able to have eternal families.. like dad always says and what aunt becca reminded me of is "were sold" or more like "im sold" on the kingdom of heaven. i cant imagine settling for anything else and i want everyone i know to be there with me.. it makes me think of the savior and how he died for everyone bc he has this same feeling. he wants everyone there with him and yet still people will say nope no thanks i want to live easy. i love a scrip in mathew 25:23 that says " well done, good and faithful servant. thou hast been faithful over a few things, i will make thee ruler of many things. enter thou into the joy of the lord" can i hear these words in the end please....

i love this gospel i love the journey although sometimes it maybe hard or frusturating its just heavenly father perparing us to be like him to give us chances to grow and one day enter to his kingdom because we actually did a few things on earth to deserve it. got to love it.. BE HAPPY and excited its the only way to go

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

familia! ya what..yes they love potatos here i get plenty of them but its rare to get them mashed.. the food is great its super fattening though its rice beans every day with some sort of meat and then for snacks they eat fried stuff, bread and cookies with milk ... yes i got both your packages!!!! soo good thank you! im savering every pb m&m..oh so sad my toothbrush is dying!!! i plug it in all day and night and it only gives me 30 seconds of power i think it will die in a week or so.. maybe send me agood tooth brush to last me 6 months? ya im close to ronald right now but i have a feeling i will leave in a few weeks so when you send it ill just give it tot he mision home to give to him. right now i just havea lingering cough but the mosquitos havent stopped im goin to whip out the net again yes i want the spray kind of sun screen its easier.. wow where to begin this week was another blessing. so i didnt have time to talk about what happened last letter with terazinha. last last monday, sister dunlop and i were looking for this street for about an hour and half. we asked everyone, people on the street, bakerys, super markets everyone was pointing in different directions.. finally i said letts just go down this street and teach. i noticed some ladies on the porch and felt inspired to ask one more person where this street was. one of them jumped up to help and said i will take you there. she looked familiar but i didnt say anything bc sometimes i confuse people. we were walking to her house and she started telling us how she has been going to this church now for more then a year. we got closer to her house and when she opened the door all the memories rushed back into my head.. i taught her back in october! she couldnt get baptized bc she was living with her boyfriend. i said "eu lembrei" i remember you! ha we started talking and she broke things off with her boyfriend and was just going to church almost every week without being a member. when i asked the bishop he thought she was a member too. right then we took the opportunitiy to invite her to be baptized, she hesitated for a moment and said "its time". we left her house knowing exactly why we were lost for so long and the reason for walking down that street. the lord is amazing, sometimes we get frusturated in the journey but its just the lord trying to help us find the better route. we helped her prepare all week along with henrique the nephew of marrissa who got baptized two weeks ago. they both were interviewed and came on sunday. well the enemy is also working just as hard as us to stop the work go forth. sunday before church terazinha said her boyfriend that she hasnt seen forever showed up at her door saturday night before her baptism and asked to get back with her and she said" no, im going to get baptized tomorrow, so if you want me you have to change too!" "yes" she didnt let satan win, i was so proud of her. so this past sunday was another blessing, another one for the books. as sister dunlop and i sat there before sacrament with a smile on our face because two of our recent converts got confirmed and two got the aaronic priesthood and henrique and terazinha were baptized. i couldnt ask for a better sunday. the blessings the lord sends when we do our part is overwhelming sometimes, i dont know what to say in my prayers but just to say thanks. he does everything for us and sometimes were so busy we dont recognize his hand in all things. we also had zone conference this past monday and i got on fire again.. not that i wasnt on fire before, haha but its always good to get a reboost they showed the numbers of our mission and so far belo horizonte mission since jan until now has had 883 baptisms! incredible it makes me want to work even harder to see this number even higher.. this work is for the diligent, patient and humble. i wish i had these attributes like children have. they forgive and forget easy and are always trying to help. we are helping a few children of some recent converts get baptized this sunday and the way they feast upon the word at such a young age is inspiring. no wonder jesus said "seja como as crianças,por eles são do céu" i dont knowt he translation exactly. but be like little children for they are those from heaven...this is what im working on everyday and the hardest well is humilty. keep working on it one day it will come ha i love you all, if there is anything i can say is do your part and let the lord do the rest com amor, sister corbin até mais

Thursday, August 4, 2011

I know everything is good im glad mandy is normal and back to work.. thursday we had interviews with the president and he is amazing i always learn more and more when i meet with him i wanted to learn more about faith and how i can increase my faith daily and basically he said its all about acting and doing we ahve to do our part so the lord can proove to us that he can do his part and once we see the results of his hand our life, our faith grows. as we were talking he felt distinctly impressed to ask about my family i said everything was fine but when he asked me the second time i told him about mandy and he wanted to call you guys to make sure everything was okay... but all is well which is good :)

our recent converts are legit is all i can say... adilson who got baptized last month started a study session with the bom every night with our other recent converts cleidiane and her siblings they read 5 chapters every night together and share what they learned, they want to finish the book of mormon by sept! but in our investigator department was a little bit more dissappointing. our two baptisms for this past sunday fell so thursday and friday i tried to think of what we could do to have a baptism this sunday.. we were praying and we remebered that a recent convert of about three months has a grandson that comes to church often so thrusday we went to their house in hopes for the best.. we taught him his name is junior he is 10 years old and his life is full of tradegy.. his mom died a few years ago and his dad uses drugs he is only 10 and has to call his gma mom to feel somewhat loved.. we went back firday and saturday and all he wants in his life is happiness. he loves going to church and said he wanted to get baptized... saturday we took the opportunity to fast so that junior could come to church. during sacrament junior and his grandma had yet to show up. all during sacrament i was in prayer trying to excercise my faith that he would come and all the sudden i heard the door open in back and in walked junior! he came! the brethren didnt waste anytime and took him to the other church to get intreviewed and his baptism was after church. what a blessing of faith and fasting. we had no one wed and with diligent prayer and earnest seeking we found someone that was willing to follow the lords example and get baptized this past sunday. leonardo and junior also got confirmed.. marrissa was sick so she will get the gift this sunday. This month of july only we had a total of 9 baptisms! when me and sister dunlop looked back on the numbers we were amazed of how much the lord has been blessing us. this past month has truly been the best in my mission so far i cant count the experiences that the lord has been in our path to over come and accomplish. there is always a way to have success and its only through our obedience we can do anything and of course exercising our faith.

i love the people of brasil they are so nice and kind. they might not all except us but they have thier funny ways of rejecting us.. the other day we went to an investigators house that accepted, the husband came to the door and i said " hi is isabel home?" " no im catholic!" ... he started slowly shutting the door during our conversation "we are missionaries that marked with her today to give her a message about christ"... during this whole time the door is slowly shutting before i knew it the door was shut and we were still talking through the door ahaha and then he just walked away... i said welp " it was nice to meet you and your invited to make a visit in the church every sunday!" i had to yell bc i realized he had almost made it all the way back to his house. they are hillarious its rare to get a door slammed but to try to be kind they do it slowly.

learning alot about faith this week and how we can increase it , i was drawn to a part that jesus christ said to peter in luke 22 " but i have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not and when thou are converted strengthen thy brethren"... peter what? wasnt converted? we are always in the conversion process. none of us can say we are done. we all have to keep working at it. why do you think people get baptized and then fall away they stopped thier conversion process... its part of the gospel, preserverance...

we have to believe! a quote i heard this week about a minister of about 25 years was converted to the church he was talking to his other firends of another church that said we just cant believe that joseph smith was a prophet and that the b of mormon is true and what he said back was a legitimate response " ya but dont you wish you could"

i love the gospel, im grateful that i believe in joseph smith and in the bom and that today we have the church of god